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Stoke beat competition from across Europe to bring in Verlinden as a 15-year-old from Standard Liege. His dad Dany Verlinden, the former Club Brugges and Belgium goalkeeper known as De Muur, AKA the Wall, has also been coaching in the Potters' Academy.

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Verlinden junior is an exciting outside forward who can cut inside to shoot or take ona full-back to cross with either foot. He turned 18 last summer when he was promoted to Mark Hughes's first team, making his senior debut in a League Cup rout against Rochdale.

He might have featured in the Premier League last season, having already been named twice on the bench before suffering a stress fracture in his lower back around Christmas that ruled him out for the rest of the campaign. He signed a five-year contract in July.

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The Belgium youth international, who spent a week training in Hamburg last month, will be the first Stoke player to benefit from the formal link up between the two clubs which was signed last summer.

Stoke technical director Mark Cartwright explained at the time: “St Pauli obviously are shopping in a different market place.

“For the Ryan Sweeneys of this world, for players like Dom Telford, Ollie Shenton, Tom Edwards who are trying to get into our first team – and we firmly believe they have a good chance of doing that – then to play somewhere like this in front of 30,000 fans that have the same enthusiasm for their team that our fans have, it makes perfect sense.”